1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to protective gloves for human hands and is directed more particularly to a glove providing protection against punctures, cuts and tears in the handling of barbed wire, concertina wire, razor wire, and the like, all hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cbarbed wirexe2x80x9d.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Current gloves for handling barbed wire and other sharp articles are made of heavy and thick materials, usually leather. The gloves are inflexible, cumbersome, cold and costly. Typically, such gloves lack durability, suffering severe degradation in short order by snagging, abrasions, cuts, tears, and punctures experienced in handling the barbed wire. Further, the gloves are outseamed, which provides a further area in which barb and razor wire can snag. The gloves absorb water and therefore become very heavy in rain and mud. They also absorb lubricants, which increases the weight of the gloves. Such thick heavy gloves cause hand fatigue during extensive continuous wear, as during an eight hour working period.
Further, current gloves in use include two layers of leather stapled together with metal staples about every xc2xc inch. The staples conduct cold from external to internal portions of the glove, further diminishing the comfort level for a user in a cold environment.
The construction of the gloves in current use is expensive and the fact that the life expectancy of such gloves is quite short merely escalates the glove expense for a barbed wire handling project.
Accordingly, there is a need for a glove for handling barbed wire, and which is comfortable, light weight, flexible, durable, water repellent and less costly, but which offers protection against punctures, cuts and tears.
An object of the invention is, therefore, to provide a protective glove which provides full hand protection against puncture and cut threats from barbed wire, without the usually attendant bulk and weight.
A further object of the invention is to provide such a glove which is soft, sorptive of sweat, insulative, and which can be produced with the finger seams on the inside, or inseamed.
A still further object of the invention is to provide such a glove as is amenable to low-cost manufacture.
With the above and other objects in view, as will hereinafter appear, a feature of the invention is the provision of a protective glove for a human hand. The protective glove includes an inner glove of polyester nonwoven needlepunched material and a coating thereon. The coating is a polyurethane plastic adhesive adhered to the inner glove and penetrating an outer surface thereof to a depth short of an inner surface thereof.
In accordance with a further feature of the invention, there is provided a method for making a protective glove for a human hand. The method includes the steps of providing an inner glove of polyester nonwoven needlepunched material, coating the inner glove with a polyurethane moisture-cure adhesive heated to about 300-325xc2x0 F., and curing the coating. The method provides a protective glove resistant to snags, cuts and punctures, while remaining flexible for handling barb wire, razor wire, and the like.
The above and other features of the invention, including various novel details of construction and combinations of parts and method steps, will now be more particularly described with reference to the accompanying drawings and pointed out in the claims. It will be understood that the particular device and method embodying the invention are shown by way of illustration only and not as limitations of the invention. The principles and features of this invention may be employed in various and numerous embodiments without departing from the scope of the invention.